The Press SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1955 SOCIAL CREDIT IN CANADA

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27832, 3 December 1955, Page 8

The Press SATURDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1955 SOCIAL CREDIT IN CANADA

The correspondence of the last few weeks has thrown little new light on the subject of Social Credit in Canada, except to emphasise that this is a political, and not a monetary, phenomenon. Whatever the Governments of Alberta and British Columbia have achieved—and their achievements, though creditable, are nothing over which to marvel in view of the high level of economic activity and the limited responsibility of the provincial governments for social services—they have achieved by orthodox methods of government financing. They have managed without the doubtful help of the A plus B theorem; they have created no money to fill a mythical “ gap ” between the cost of goods produced and the power of the public to buy them; they have issued no “ national dividends ”. What they have done they have done without taking control of currency and credit in their territories, which remains the sole prerogative of the Canadian Federal Government. Social Credit first achieved political power in 1935. As with the Labour Party in New Zealand, it was helped by the depression and the inability of existing governments to master its problems. Social Credit in Alberta was also helped by the disrepute into which the Canadian political system had fallen at the time. With the turn of the economic tide, the whole of Canada, not merely Alberta, recovered economic stability and confidence in its politicians to govern. Alberta was no shining example to be hurriedly followed l>y every other Canadian province and then by the Federal electors. For 17 years Alberta was the sole Social Credit government in the Canadian provinces. It probably would have remained in splendid isolation but for the collapse of the LiberalConservative Coalition in British Columbia and the internecine strife within the Conservative Party. Significantly, it is considered that the best prospect for further advance by the Social Credit Party in Canada is in the province of Saskatchewan, where the main parties are tom by domestic feuds. Set-back in Alberta

Just as significantly—for those who are interested in the possibility of Social Credit becoming a force in Canadian national politics—the party has in the last year suffered a serious reverse in its first and safest stronghold. In Alberta, Mr Manning’s Government went to the polls for a vote of confidence after charges of maladministration and corruption had been made by its political opponents in Parliament. The Government received its vote of confidence, but one qualified by the loss of 15 seats and the defeat of three Ministers, including the Attorney-General. The charges against the Government, as outlined by the Canadian correspondent of the ** Round Table ”, a periodical noted for its objective view of

Commonwealth affairs, began with the disclosure that two Social Credit members of the Legislature, Messrs Lee and Landeryou, had leased to the Government a building at the very generous rent of 2215 dollars a month. These members were forced to resign their seats, but successfully stood for re-election. The dissolution, however, was precipitated by an allegation by Mr Harper Prowse, the provincial leader of the Liberal Party, that a substantial number of Social Credit candidates had forfeited their seats by securing loans from local branches operated by the provincial treasury. The results of the inquiry promised by the Government have not yet been made known —or have not reached New Zealand. The outcome is clearly fraught with the gravest consequences for the future of the Social Credit Party. As the “ Round Table ” correspondent put it:

The chief stock-in-trade of their appeal for converts has been that their party is always scrupulously careful to nominate as its candidates only upright God-fearing Christians of irreproachable character. Taking their cue from Premier Manning, who is an assiduous lay preacher, many of the Social Credit politicians are in the habit of opening their meetings with a prayer and imparting a flavour of religious evangelism to their speeches. The voters are told that, wherever the Social Credit Party is placed in power, it will introduce standards of political morality and administrative honesty hitherto unknown in North America. But if it is proved beyond doubt that in Alberta, where the party originated, a substantial number of the politicians who have advertised themselves as patterns of virtue are of the same common clay as Canadian politicians of other stripes, and in some cases burdened with more than the average share of human trailties, then future claims about the lily-white purity of the Social Credit Party are apt to be received with mirthful scepticism by the public.

“Lip Service to Douglas” From this distance. New Zealanders naturally have some difficulty in understanding the nature of Social Credit governments and their strange appeal to the voters of the western provinces of Canada, To balance the rosy picture painted by the advocates of Social Credit in this country, a further extract from a dispatch to the “Round Table” (written before the political crisis in Alberta earlier in the year) at least merits consideration: The leaders of the Social Credit Party still pay lip service to the financial and economic theories of the late Major Douglas, but they have ceased to make any efforts for their practical application, and one of their chieftains in British Columbia is rated so orthodox in his financial views that he has been elected a director of the Canadian Bank of Commerce. Their programme is a weird farrago of muddled economic thinking and religious evangelism, and prayers and hymns are staple features of many of their meetings. They assail all the other parties as equally stupid and corrupt. . . , They are sworn enemies of the United -lutions and other international organ-

isations and in an earlier era could have been classified as ardent imperialists. But many of them are also tinged with anti-Semitism and betray the earmarks of a Fascist mentality; for example, one of the Social Credit group at Ottawa, Mr J. H. Blackmore. M.P., has constituted himself the Canadian champion of the egregious Senator McCarthy; and another, Mr E. G. Hansell, in the sessions of a special committee which is investigating the operations of Canada's radio and television systems, was so hostile to the principle of free speech that he wanted all critics of the present Canadian way of life to be banned from the air. But these glaring defects and vagaries and lack of any coherent philosophy of politics do not deter rich financial backers from supplying the Social Credit Party with ample funds for persistent propaganda. New Zealanders who accept the view, zealously urged on them by the Social Crediters, that there ,is something fundamentally unhealthy about their financial system, would be wise to take a close look at the qualifications of the overseas doctors whose prescriptions are now being peddled in this country. It cannot be emphasised too strongly that their medicines are untried. Thanks to the Federal Constitution, the Social Credit Governments of Alberta and British Columbia have been prevented from tampering with 1 the monetary system. New Zealand- ■ ers would have no such constitutional protection should Social . Credit ever become the government

here. Those who accept the Social Credit diagnosis and invite its treatment are, in fact, offering themselves as guinea-pigs for the most reckless kind of economic experiment, under the direction of men who, however sincere in their beliefs, have neither experience nor precedent to guide them, and whose theories, however modified by time and distance, are rooted in financial quackery.